Alexandra Malik

I remember when I applied to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). My high school experience was not ideal, and I had always dreamed of pursuing something in the arts. Sophmore year of high school I tried out for the fall drama production, and there was no going back from there. I worked hard to keep my grades up and fill my resume with impressive extracurriculars; I applied to nine different schools, really only wanting to attend NYU. The day I was accepted was probably the most memorable day of my life. It signified a turning point: I was about to embark on the journey of my dreams.

Looking back, I don’t doubt that it was the most worthwhile choice I’ve ever made (which is lucky, because I, as most high schoolers are, was pressured to make that decision when I was only seventeen years old). I learned so much about myself as a performer and a human being, and became an instrument through which characters could live, breathe, and have their stories told. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and an experience which I will never forget. That being said, during my time at NYU, I wasn’t completely honest with myself about the realities that lay ahead of me once I graduated. It was hard to keep questions about the future clear in my head because things were so uncertain post-graduation. Still I wondered, was pursuing a degree in the arts worth it?

Eileen Cunniffe

It’s no secret within the nonprofit sector that volunteers are often the difference between “make” and “break,” the special sauce that keeps an organization moving forward, delivering against its mission, serving its constituents. From hands-on volunteers to skills-based volunteers to the volunteer leaders who serve on boards, it’s almost impossible to calculate the value that those who give back add to the sector. So it’s nice to know that those who volunteer benefit from the experience as well.

A national survey of 3,351 adults conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of UnitedHealth Group demonstrates that volunteering is good for your health. Here are some of the takeaways from this research:

• Volunteers say they feel better—physically, mentally and emotionally—than non-volunteers
• Volunteering helps people manage and lower stress levels
• Volunteers feel a deeper connection to communities and others
• Volunteers are more informed healthcare consumers and are more engaged and involved in taking care of their own health

If you work with volunteers—or if you are one yourself—those first three points are probably not very surprising. The fourth is perhaps a bit unexpected, but the report includes some interesting data around this topic, including people who report that volunteering helps them cope with a chronic illness and/or helps them take their minds off their own problems. Survey respondents who volunteer scored better than those that don’t on nine well-established measures of emotional well-being.

Rebecca Burrell

At The Right Brain Initiative, an equity-based arts-in-schools program in the Portland area, we’re committed to marrying marketing and community engagement in the organic sort of way they were meant to be. As I advocate for arts education throughout the community, I’m really excited about developing sincere relationships and substantial partnerships. In fact, this month we’re finally reaching the apex of a really fruitful long-term collaboration with Design for Good committee of AIGA Portland, the professional association for design.

Early on, we identified our dynamic creative business community as a key outreach target. Whether they become Facebook fans, volunteers, friends, or maybe donors someday, it is a natural affinity group for us. These folks have personally benefited from the kind of education we promote.

Fortunately, our friends at AIGA wanted to do something to make a genuine impact on both our organization and arts education at large, but arriving at a collaborative model for this partnership wasn’t easy. While the global design sector has expressed great interest in addressing arts education, real partnerships between the design and non-profit communities are really hard to find. Socially focused designers are used to donating services to non-profits (Thank you! Please keep it up!), but those relationships can create an uneven power dynamic that prevent true collaboration. Designers are also fond of gathering to generate ideas to address social problems, but there is often no plan to bring those solutions to life. We had look for a new standard.

On October 19, 2016, The Center for Arts Excellence (CAE) at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas, hosted a Creative Conversation as a way to celebrate National Arts and Humanities Month. The CAE gathered women leaders together from the Grace Museum, Abilene Cultural Affairs Council, United Way, Paramount, Hunt Direct Marketing and McMurry University to discuss the arts in Abilene. More specifically, this group focused their discussion on three distinct areas: arts and community, access to the arts, and possible community arts partnerships.

There's no doubt that these last several months have left many of us with a sense of deep divide—both across the nation and within our local communities. There are many remedies for that and most of them have nothing to do with politics (or presidents). I need to be clear that my writing here is not meant to minimize these deep and abiding concerns, nor should these words be received as an overtly political text. Instead, I simply want to drill down into what I believe art—and specifically in this context, arts education—can teach us in these anxious (for some, though not all) times.

This year marked the 15^th anniversary of the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review, which annually recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country. Over the years we have had over a thousand applications. Each year, a jury of up to three art professionals reviewed and selected projects to highlight. This week we are posting blogs directly from those involved in the creation of the projects in PAN Year in Review selected by our three art professionals, Peggy Kendellen (Public Art Program Manager at the Regional Arts & Cultural Council) Laurie Jo Reynolds (artist) and Ernest C. Wong (landscape architecture and urban planning professional) and presented on June 11th at the Americans for the Arts Public Art & Placemaking Preconference in Chicago.

When the Music in Motion School for Higher Dance Education (MMSHDE) in St. Croix reached out to the International Association for Blacks in Dance (IABD) for support in September 2018, I snatched the online bulletin and hit the ground running. I had been looking for a way to get more involved with IABD, but at the time, I didn’t have reliable transportation which would have allowed me to take part in their Administrative Internship Program at Headquarters. But if I knew that if I could find a way to participate in and help my dance community, then I would. I reached out to local dance studios: Washington Dancewear, Divine Dance Institute, Supreme Productions and Company, and Neema Dance Collective, who willingly agreed to donate brand new and new condition dancewear to ship off to our Sister Island in the US Virgin Islands. Now, in 2019, it’s an exciting time for the revived dance school. After the island saw devastation from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the school is back to holding classes, performing regularly, and participating in community affairs.

Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

At the forefront of the current dialogue across the nation and around the globe are questions concerning how we negotiate with the world around us to address the growing concerns of resource allocation, preservation, and climate change. The pursuit and development of the policies, systems, and infrastructure needed to provide long term sustainable solutions to these issues reaches across multiple fields from the political to the scientific and serves as inspiration to many of the 2018 PAN Year in Review projects. Though the materials, execution, and duration are all unique, these projects are unified by the role of the artist(s) in translating the collective experiences and stories of our essential ecosystems and habitats into personal narratives of site.

So many terms are tossed around each day in the world of education: personalized learning, student-centered learning, innovation, creativity, proficiency-based learning, 21st century skills, mass-customized learning, competency based education, and on and on. I’ve been thinking more about “innovation in education” lately. It seems that innovation can be a hiccup for many educators. We know that teachers are responsible for so much more today than even five years ago. In this century and the focus on the global economy, innovation is a critical component. Frequently, my thoughts turn to wonderings and questions including: What are we doing in arts education to support and/or teach innovation? Are we providing the opportunity and encouraging learners to create innovative works of art? What is the role and responsibility of arts education and arts educators when it comes to innovation? 

As creative arts therapists working within the VA, we have one of the most rewarding jobs imaginable. The veterans we work with inspire us every day and we work within a system that values our contributions. It is an exciting time to do this work, as the arts and creative arts therapies are receiving increased recognition by both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, thanks largely to programs such as the National Initiative for Arts and Health in the Military: Americans for the Arts and Creative Forces: The NEA Military Healing Arts Network. This year, the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine is partnering with the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs on an open-access online resource for veterans and community artists who wish to engage in community arts interactions with active service members, veterans, and their loved ones. We hope this project increases arts access in support of our service members, deepens their connection to their local communities, and enhances the overall wellbeing of all involved.

This is a pivotal moment for Seattle. King County, Washington is experiencing rapid growth, attracting new companies and a diversifying, expanding population. We are also grappling with pressing challenges around education, homelessness, healthcare and mental health, workforce development, and income inequality. The benefits of our region’s growth are not broadly shared, and inequities persist. To ensure a healthy and equitable future, we need to find new mechanisms to solve these interconnected, complex challenges. To inject insights about how arts can play a role in addressing these needs, ArtsFund, a Seattle-based grantmaking and advocacy nonprofit, recently published the Social Impact of the Arts Study: How Arts Impact King County Communities. Defining “social impact” as the ability to advance community priorities, we focused on key areas where arts intersect with our region’s challenges. We center on equity throughout, examining how arts can lessen the opportunity gap. Our report offers a new way of looking at things—how investment in the arts is a proactive, strategic investment in community—with potential implications for advancing and amplifying the social impact of the arts in other localities. 

I can remember my first field trip to a music concert at the Symphony Hall when I was in kindergarten. That sole field trip event hardly takes the credit for my entryway into the arts, but trust me, there were many more learning journeys that same year that shaped my appreciation and quest for wanting more of the arts. We were fortunate, when I was in school, to be able to take many field trips to countless arts centers and cultural venues; one: due to our school’s close proximity to downtown Atlanta, and two: field trips were insisted upon decades ago. Not to mention, my arts trajectory was shaped by my mother’s unwavering encouragement. But in so many districts and schools today, arts and cultural field trips are in decline due to the prioritization of math and English-language arts curricula over other subjects. If cultivating (life-long) learners and student achievement is the goal, what field trips provide is a connection to the real world that stimulates the quest for more content knowledge equaling increased student achievement.

International Sculpture Day (IS Day), on April 27, is a worldwide event celebrating the many ways sculpture and public art impact and improve people’s lives. IS Day, first initiated by the International Sculpture Center (ISC) in 2015, occurs on the last Saturday of April. On this day, artists and groups interested in the arts host events including workshops, studio tours, gallery openings, performances, project dedications, and more, all celebrating how sculpture, in its many forms, improves lives. The definition of sculpture is expanding to include both traditional forms and works including performance, video, installation art, public art, and more. IS Day is a great way to engage with sculpture and its power in communities. As a Board Member of ISC and a Public Artist, I am participating in IS Day by dedicating Aurora Bright Dawn. This public artwork combines space, color, and form on an aging pedestrian bridge, promoting community connectivity and safe crossing.

Art schools are a funny thing. I know because I went to one. I spent five years making work across various media, trying to develop a voice as an artist, and at the end of it all I graduated with no real sense of what was next. I think this is a fairly common experience for a lot of art school students and it’s an experience that’s dramatically different from a lot of other degrees one might pursue in college. I know that too because I returned to campus five years later to get an MBA, and the education and professional opportunities I received after that were in stark contrast to my undergraduate experience. I went back to study business not because I couldn’t find work with my art degree (well, not entirely), but because I realized years later that I was interested in the way businesses can solve problems and I wanted to build one that solved a real problem.

I conducted my first survey of local arts agencies in 1991. It was all paper in those days. We didn’t even ask for fax numbers because too few had one! Over the years we have fielded dozens of local arts agency (LAA) surveys—some were short and easy to fill out and provided useful information, but lacked adequate depth; others were comprehensive and extremely informative, but were too long and hard for respondents to complete. While the paper surveys became online surveys and technology has made distribution more expansive, what remains as pressing as ever is the need for reliable, relevant, and easily accessible information about the LAAs—research that provides early alerts about new trends, drives discourse about how the industry is evolving, and simply allows LAAs to see how they compare to their peers. In 2018, Americans for the Arts implemented a new annual survey to accomplish just this—The Profile of Local Arts Agencies. There are multiple ways you can put the Profile findings to work for you! 

During this past school year, Dr. Lauren Neefe with Common Good Atlanta reached out to the High Museum to do a guest lecture experience at Metro Reentry Facility, a state prison reentry program in Atlanta. We came to one class during a series of art and art history lectures at the facility. This blog post features Dr. Neefe’s experience with incorporating art from the High Museum and music in her curriculum.

Last fall, as the volunteer site director for Common Good Atlanta’s education program at Metro Reentry Facility, the newly reopened and “re-missioned” state prison in southeast Atlanta, I was given the opportunity to give a series of lectures on art and art history to the 28 incarcerated students in our college course. My doctoral training is in English literature and poetry, not art history; but I knew I was up to the task of introducing art as a contested category of culture and knowledge. Maybe I could reframe the obligations of punitive discipline as the pleasures of an aesthetic one. Maybe the students and I could write over the indignities of one kind of suffering with the dignity of another, the kind artists and scholars know as passion.

Arts Entrepreneurship is nothing new. It is fair to assume that artists have always been entrepreneurial. Educators in higher education have been earnestly addressing this topic as early as the 1970s, first at the Eastman School of Music. However, what is new is a formalized system of education that teaches artists how to, specifically, act entrepreneurially. Today, there are over one hundred colleges and universities addressing the topic, and at least 33 Master’s programs around the world focused on arts, creative, or cultural entrepreneurship. In academic literature, there is absolutely no consensus as to what “entrepreneurship” means, much less “arts entrepreneurship.” In this post, I will address the key components found in one definition, and speak to the importance of arts entrepreneurship and its potential to help artists make a living from their creativity, artistry, skills, and talents. I will speak to increasing chances of success while decreasing risks associated with a career in the arts.

Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

Due to increased public discourse over social issues that include marginalized communities, and the current state of our welfare infrastructure, artists are creating works for public space that demand closer examination of our society and our treatment of one another. Indicative of the evolution of public art practice, these works suggest the expanding role of public art in framing and directing public thought and activism. Of the 2018 selected PAN Year in Review projects, three projects represented the intentionality of artists in centering marginalized identities and geographies. These works help frame social justice and inclusion within their communities in a number of ways.

Why is it important that we get these terms right? As we work to communicate the value of the work that we do, it’s important to paint an accurate and authentic picture. It is only once we acknowledge the work we are currently doing that we are able to grow.

Americans for the Arts, like any national nonprofit advocacy and research organization, is a complex, multifaceted smorgasbord of programs, activities, and goals. Our modest number of employees not only work to make fundamental changes to society using the arts and culture, but we also work to change how people view the arts and culture by getting them to recognize its value to the economy, education, and to the health and wellbeing of our nation and its communities. For a nonprofit of our size, we often do the work or see successes similar to much larger nonprofits or even for-profit companies. We owe this success to our members and the thousands of arts organizations across the country who work with us to accomplish our goals. But, there is another group of organizations that Americans for the Arts partners with who also help us accomplish our goals. These organizations are not arts-centric groups, but they do see the value of the arts and culture in accomplishing their goals. We call this group of organizations our Strategic Partners.

No matter where you are in your career as an artist, you’re probably used to wearing a lot of different hats. You likely do your own bookkeeping, maybe your own accounting, definitely your own marketing and promotion. As your creative pursuits grow and expand, you may even find yourself staring face to face with some sort of legal issue. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “I’m an artist, but I don’t have any legal issues to worry about.” Well, I have some bad news for you. Every artist has legal issues to worry about (they aren’t all bad legal issues, though!). Every artist is a small business, and every small business has legal issues and needs. Just as small business has accounting, banking, and insurance needs, so do artists. While it may be difficult to know exactly what your legal needs might be, there are three categories of activities that artists participate in that are directly related to legal issues relevant to your artistic livelihood.

We’ve had the great fortune of working with multiple programs that have helped shaped the lives of young people through arts education. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see impact happening at that moment ... but what about after? Those of us who work with underserved communities know how critical our work is in leveling the playing field, and are so proud when we see our students finishing school and utilizing those skills to move on to the next phase of their lives. But what about those who can’t make that leap quite as easily? They have all the lessons and skills from what we’ve taught them through the magic of an arts education; they should be able to figure it out, right? Not always. This is an experience any young person could struggle with, regardless of what resources are available to them. What would happen when arts education programs considered it a moral imperative to support our alumni in the transition from childhood to adulthood?